What it's like to read books on an iPad

The first book I finished in 2012 was Matt Bondurant's THE NIGHT SWIMMER (liked it!) Because I had an e-galley it was also the first book I started and finished on my new-to-me iPad.

I love gadgets but had held off on buying myself an iPad for the usual reasons -- cost, wariness of what the first few generations would be able and unable to do, lack of pressing need for another consumptive media device. I'm also not a huge touchscreen person, as the last person in New York to voluntarily get a Blackberry (and you know what it does really well? It makes phone calls ahem). Playing with it has definitely reignited that sense of fun I had when I got my first mp3 player, and I haven't even gotten addicted to Angry Birds yet -- but, as everyone warned, it is better suited to consuming media than creating, as I struggle through composing an email longer than three sentences.

Kindle books on an iPad can be accessed through the free Amazon app and downloaded manually one-by-one from your existing Kindle library. So far I haven't bought any books through the Kindle app on the iPad or iBooks, just taught myself how to sync the app and the Kindle (a process in itself). Once I did that I was able to ping-pong back and forth between both with the same book, a trick that probably delighted only me, but if both devices are on and connected to wireless internet, one will alert you if you are on a further location with the other and prompt you to jump ahead. It only gets confusing if you remember a paragraph being at a particular location on one page, and then find it in a different place on the other device.

The major advantage I see so far in reading in Kindle for iPad over Kindle itself is the backlit screen, making it unnecessary to turn another light on; the major disadvantage, the attraction that an iPad might have to people on the subway who would not consider a Kindle worth stealing. Being able to flip back and forth while reading to my email or Google Reader is a draw; I don't need the interruption, although it was nice to manage both in one device.

I haven't done a really thorough exploration of the literary or reading-related apps out there, so I'd welcome your suggestions. I will say that the Goodreads app is lovely and so easy to refresh I almost wished that I had more Goodreads friends.